Garden Party: Critic Reviews

MovieWeb: 0 reviews

11%

RottenTomatoes: 19 reviews

Stephen Holden New York Times (Top Critic)

40

A low-rent answer to Robert Altmana(TM)s Short Cuts.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Aaron Hillis Village Voice (Top Critic)

If we're meant to take these threads as a tapestry of L.A., then Freeland clearly needs to stop watching Robert Altman DVDs and go outside to see what the real world is actually like.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Peter Debruge Variety (Top Critic)

Their lives eventually intersect, but in more or less arbitrary ways.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Kyle Smith New York Post (Top Critic)

13

Slow ride to nowhere.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Todd Gilchrist IGN Movies

40

Freeland's film offers a poor man's Los Angeles opus.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Jeff Bayer The Scorecard Review

60

This ensemble piece works if you know Los Angeles. After all, it's very possible for a homeless kid, pot-smoking Realtor, young model and a number of perverts to cross paths in that town.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Amy Nicholson Boxoffice Magazine

60

Oddly, halfway through when Freeland strains our credulity even further, the film finally feels fresh
Full Review » 4 years ago
Jeffrey M. Anderson Cinematical

Sophomore writer/director Freeland doesn't quite feel like the host of this particular "garden party," but rather like the party's Sabrina, secretly spying from the sidelines.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Geoff Berkshire Metromix.com

30

A blandly pointless roundelay of bad acting, forgettable characters and flat drama.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Scott Tobias AV Club

25

It's a production in search of a movie.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Jeffrey M. Anderson Combustible Celluloid

50

A bit like Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), taking a look at a cross-section of Los Angeles characters, though it runs less than half the length and, conversely, half the depth.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat Spirituality and Practice

20

A dreary drama about a group of selfish and amoral characters whose lives intersect in Los Angeles.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Sean Axmaker Seattle Post-Intelligencer

34

They're not a likeable bunch, to be sure, but the bigger problem is that there's little resonance to their stories.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Eric D. Snider EricDSnider.com

42

The characters aren't interesting, and the stories toggle between tawdry and ridiculous.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Marcy Dermansky About.com

20

Willa Holland is the one good thing about Garden Party -- not because of her performance (which is neither good or bad) but for that nostalgia she evoked in me for young Fairuza [Balk].
Full Review » 4 years ago
Doris Toumarkine Film Journal International

A fatally fractured, disconnected mosaic of unappealing, marginal Hollywood types haphazardly interconnecting.
Full Review » 4 years ago
David Fear Time Out New York

34

There's neither brilliance nor bite to this look at innocence lost. Next time, go Nathanael West, young man.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Ed Gonzalez Slant Magazine

38

A tapestry of intersecting Hollywood lives that illuminates nothing except for writer-director Jason Freeland's obvious fondness for Short Cuts.
Full Review » 4 years ago
Kam Williams NewsBlaze

75

Not exactly a feelgood drama, but nonetheless an eye-opening peek at the ugly underbelly of a merciless metropolis that could care less about the fate of the least of its brethren.
Full Review » 4 years ago